Wednesday, October 27, 2010

As part of my course on paperless classrooms and social media at Hopkins, the students and I discuss the pedagogy of distance teaching/learning and the implications of distance learning on the teaching profession. This semester, I am opening up the conversation on Wiziq; you are invited to join us at 6:45PM EST tomorrow, Oct 28th, for great conversation and debate.

Another thing that I've found really enlightening is allowing international students to turn in work in their primary language. It's easy enough to use Translate to, well, translate. So let students turn in essays written in German, Korean, Urdu, or whathaveyou; of course the translation is not perfect, but it sure gives you a better idea of what's going on in a student's head than trying to make guesses based on the trouble they have writing in a target language.

This doesn't mean that English-language instruction in a US school isn't important -- of course it is for all sorts of practical reasons; all I'm saying is that we don't have to let language skills always get in the way of a student's ability to express understanding.

Getting past that language issue allows students to demonstrate their understanding of and engagement with content and concepts. And in most classes -- particularly in high school -- that's what we're going for. Furthermore, sharing primary language documents between students can help break down a lot of preconceptions students may have of one another based on language differences.

Monday, October 04, 2010

This is the first year we're using an advisory system. Basically, instead of teachers having a morning homeroom, we meet later in the day with a small group of about a dozen students. The advisory groups are made up of students from ninth through twelfth grade. We meet to talk about school, classes, grades, and life in general. I've taken my kids out to exercise and @schickbob and I organized a tug-of-war between our groups which was covered by the yearbook photographers.

So, now I'm looking for things to do on a daily basis. Just today we began a TED-talk series. Right now, we're watching Pranav Mistry's recent talk about augmented reality. And we're actively taking suggestions on what you all think are the best TED-talks.

We also see this as a potential chance to reach out to classrooms in other parts of the world. And so, I would like to invite teachers from -- well, everywhere really -- who'd like to share classroom experiences via Skype to get in touch. I think it would be an excellent opportunity to spend a few minutes each day engaging with the classrooms beyond our classroom.

So I'm turning to all of you to advise this advisor. What sort of things would you do if you and your students had ten minutes a day to engage with the world however you liked?

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Teach Paperless: Now!

TeachPaperless began in February 2009 as a blog detailing the experiences of one teacher in a paperless classroom. It has grown to be something much more than that. In January 2011, TeachPaperless became a collaboratively written blog dedicated to conversation and commentary about the intertwined worlds of digital technology, new media, and education.

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TeachPaperless was noted as a Twitterer worth ReTweeting by Education Week's Digital Education blog. Also in Ed Week: "Shelly Blake-Plock has had some really intriguing posts already this year and I'm already behind. Considering he published 639 entries on his TeachPaperless blog in 2009 it's going to be hard to keep up, but well worth the try."

“When I originally contacted Shelley last week to inquire as to whether or not he would be willing to talk to my staff, he jumped right in, and he didn’t disappoint. What impressed me most about him as I listened to him describe his practice was his clear vision of what it meant for his students to function in a classroom that he designed: it was about them learning. He truly designed the environment with their learning–their unbridled learning–in mind. His decision was not a secretarial one, but rather came from a desire to push students to take control of information gathering, processing, and creating.” – Chalkdust 101

TeachPaperless was named one of the 'Top 25 Blogs for Educators' byWorld Wide Learn.

"I think you have some great ideas for teachers, and as we do professional development around the state of Maryland, we will point teachers to your blog." Debbie Vickers of Thinkport.org a partnership between Maryland Public Television and Johns Hopkins University's Center for Technology in Education

"The invention of the computer promised to lead us to a paperless society but has failed to deliver on that promise... until now, perhaps?" TeachPaperless was featured by Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning as an Everyday Innovation

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Photo Credit: MJ Wojewodzki; a portion of a painted wall in the Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii [2006]